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Maureen Rowan

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This individual was recently confirmed to have been identified. Some details may change as more information is released publicly.

Maureen Lou Rowan (née: Minor) (born March 21, 1949) was a woman found murdered under a highway overpass in Lake Panasoffkee, Florida, on February 19, 1971. She was nicknamed "Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee" while unidentified.

She was identified in October 2025 after the Sumter County Sheriff's Office acquired a new, more comprehensive digital fingerprint system, enabling a match to out-of-county arrest records.

Background[]

Maureen Rowan was born Maureen Lou Minor in 1949 in Maine. She married Charles Emery Rowan Sr., who went by his middle name, in 1967. They had two children together, lived at 1206 Windermere Way in Tampa, and had a tumultuous relationship.

Charles Rowan Sr. filed for divorce against his wife in November 1970; the divorce was legally granted in August 1971, seven months after the discovery of Maureen Rowan's body. After the disappearance of their mother, he reportedly told his children that she had left him. The couple had additional ties to Jacksonville and Gainesville in Florida, and Enigma, Georgia.

Maureen Rowan was arrested for passing a bounced check in Hillsborough County, Florida, in 1970. During this encounter with law enforcement, she was fingerprinted, and those prints later helped identify her.

Case[]

Two hitchhikers from Illinois discovered Rowan's body after noticing a human hand underneath an Interstate 75 overpass in Shady Brook Creek, a shallow body of water that fed into Lake Panasoffkee. Her remains were badly decomposed, and she was thought to have been killed between three weeks and one month before being discovered. She had been strangled with a size 36 men's belt that was still around her neck, and had also suffered two rib fractures.

In 1986 and 2012, her body was exhumed from the Oak Grove Cemetery in Wildwood, Florida, coinciding with advancements in forensic testing, and multiple reconstructions were prepared of her likeness over the years in different artistic mediums. Stable isotope testing of her remains indicated that she may have originated in southeastern Europe, possibly in the mining town of Laurium, Greece. It was also believed she had lived in the United States for no longer than 10-12 months. These findings were based on very high levels of lead in her teeth. Following these results, it was speculated that she might have been in the region for an Epiphany festival. This celebration attracts many Greek Orthodox people to the area each January. A potential match between the victim and a Greek woman known as "Konstantina" was also investigated, but could not be definitively ruled out at the time.

After identification, it was revealed that Rowan was born in the continental United States, specifically in the state of Maine. Authorities postulated that certain embalming chemicals used to preserve her body after death may have contaminated the tissue samples used to perform the original analysis. These harsh embalming practices also caused her DNA to degrade to a point where the extraction of an SNP profile needed for investigative genetic genealogy was complicated. Several attempts to generate usable data from the contaminated samples, conducted by different labs beginning in 2018, were all unsuccessful. A rudimentary form of DNA analysis was performed after her first exhumation in 1986, but it was insufficient for genealogical research.

"Carol" theory[]

Around 1988, a woman came forward, stating that she recognized a 3D reconstruction of the victim's face created by artist Betty Pat. Gatliff as a teenager she had met in 1970. The woman said the girl, who called herself "Carol", was a runaway from an undisclosed state. The girl was known to hang around Clearwater Beach, south of Lake Panasoffkee. The girl had a previous ankle injury when she tried to run away, and had allegedly been pregnant and was forced to give up the child before she ran away. The woman said she last saw Carol around the fall of 1970 when she left with three unknown men from Tampa. This theory was disproven after Rowan's identification.

Identification[]

The Sumter County Sheriff's Office acquired the Storm Automatic Biometric Identification System (ABIS) in February 2025; Storm ABIS is a cloud-based digital fingerprint system created by IDEMIA and marketed to law enforcement. In October 2025, the unknown woman's fingerprints were entered into this system in cooperation with a latent print examiner from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, allowing for a match to Rowan's 1970 arrest in Tampa and ultimately her identification. The prints taken at her autopsy had last been submitted for comparison with the FBI in 2006, and the fingerprint card from her arrest was first entered digitally in 2013.

Charles Rowan Sr. was stated to be a person of interest in his estranged wife's murder after her identification based on several suspicious actions and behaviors he exhibited prior to and after her death. However, authorities have said there is insufficient evidence to formally name him as a suspect. He died at 74 years old in 2015.

Characteristics[]

  • Brown hair.
  • Possible brown eyes.
  • Had given birth at least once.
  • Extensive dental work, including fillings and a porcelain crown.
  • Watson-Jones right ankle reconstruction to correct for instability, performed between 1967 and 1970.
  • Periostitis of lower right leg; this inflammatory condition of the tissues around bone would've caused pain and a possible limp.

Clothing and accessories[]

  • White and green floral poncho or shawl.
  • Solid green shirt.
  • Green plaid pants.
  • Nylon underwear.
  • Gold Baylor wristwatch on the left hand.
  • Gold wedding ring with a clear stone.
  • Small gold necklace.

Gallery[]

Media[]

  • The case was featured in an October 1992 episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
  • Following the isotope testing, the case was also featured in the Greek missing persons TV show "Fos sto Tounel" ("Φως στο Τούνελ"), where a caller mentioned the potential link to Konstantina.

Sources[]

Footnotes[]

  1. ↑ Some sources may give her middle name as "Lu".
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